Maybe a poor choice of mine ordering a fan room to cut costs,thinking we had a pool so it didn’t matter. Well it did and resulted in me having three showers within the night just to cool down, other than that slept like a baby.

After saying good morning to a few young monks we headed for the hills.

We had a beautiful rolling road for the majority of the day. With the mountains never far from sight.

Different regions or villages seem to specialise in different things here, and after riding through ‘bamboo’ town we stopped for a drink in the rather smelly town of ‘Garlic’.

Found this mirror temple on route, To Jazzy? It was covered entirely with a mosaic of mirrors.

We are not the only connoisseurs of mangos around these parts, flys and other insects also love them. In fact they love them so much they will eat the lot given the chance. In order to save the fruit, while not harming the insects or their pockets by paying out for pester side the locals wrap each fruit in paper, ingenious!

After making it to Ban Hong we picking up a few tomatoes and freshly cooked rice from the market, in preparation for a carrier bag lunch, and sourced a hotel out with the Germans. Touring Tip: always ask for a discount, people are happy to barter for anything over here.

This place was a little piece of heaven. The luxurious wooden motel style cabins were mounted on top of a hill which produced the most elevated and calming view of the trip.

As we headed out for dinner with the crazy duo we got offered a lift in our hosts sidecar. Andy refused as we had just seen a sign about road crashes and preferred to walk into town.

Stopping only to watch a bit of a pickup game at the local basketball court.

And capture sunset over the range.

During dinner the heavens opened and we got a first and very wet taste of Thai rain, refreshing although by the time it was ankle deep who knows what we were walking through…

We joined in with the guys to celebrated Father’s Day. This is a huge deal in Germany and is a day were you meet up with male friends and basically get smashed. Nothing to do with spending time with your father, because he will also be doing the same with his friends. This panicked Andy into swiftly sending a message to his dad. Then I realised we don’t celebrate father day in the UK until June, whoops sorry Ken, but better early then never!